Poe
by Random-Battlecry
Summary: Why is a raven like a writing desk? The question is odd, old, impossible. It recalls a time when Hatter thought he had all the answers. He was wrong. Set far pre-series, featuring the young versions of Hatter, March, and several other canon Wonderlanders.


**Title: Poe  
Characters/Pairing: Young!Hatter, Young!March, several other canon Wonderlanders  
Rating: PG  
Disclaimer: Not mine. Yet.  
Word count: 3,100  
Summary: _Why is a raven like a writing desk?_ The question is odd, old, impossible. It recalls a time when Hatter thought he had all the answers. He was wrong.  
A/N: A surprisingly non-angsty look at Hatter and March, in their wayward youth. Written for the "Medium" prompt in the First Quarterly Challenge for new_wonderland on LJ. Almost everything in this story, including all the little secondary characters, is a reference to the original books.**

* * *

**Poe**

Hatter wished he had an off-switch in his brain.

Was there no end to the ridiculousness of this situation? Here they were at finals. He'd spent the entire year regretfully _not_ making time with his seat mate— Mary Ann, Mary Ann, Mary Ann, of all the abominable, insufferable beauties! Just because _his_ father wasn't an Ace— and instead of cramming for the quiz last night, he'd spent the entire time teaching Dormy how to set cherry bombs off in the lav. The ensuing lack of indoor plumbing notwithstanding, he couldn't quite convince himself that had been a waste of time. Dormy was good at it, now. Passing on this life skill, Hatter thought, was a valuable way to spend an evening.

So now here his mind was, racing this way and that, aimless, artless, asinine. He felt like a mome rath caught in one of those Endless Cycles, the wheel that was supposed to give the rath some exercise but in fact usually spun them to their deaths. Mome raths were clever creatures by nature, but not one of them had as yet figured out the off switch— which thought brought him full circle. Off-switch. He wanted one. For his brain.

It wasn't just the inevitable failing at schools. It wasn't just the inevitable failing at Mary Ann, who was insistent that she was a career woman and would be following her own path into the well-paid domestic arts. It wasn't just the inevitable blame that would fall on his shoulders when Dormy misjudged the length of fuse (or fell asleep on it, more like) and Hatter was implemented in his horrible limbless death.

It was all of it together, a heaping steaming pile of _this, that, the other_, that made it extremely difficult for Hatter to concentrate on the quiz at hand. _Besides_ the fact that he didn't know the answer. He didn't even feel he could _cheat_ adequately, with the state his mind was in.

But he was going to give it a shot, anyhow.

Mary Ann, not a particularly bright sort at the best of times, was now dithering in her latent excitement about graduation and her plans for afterward. Rather than actually answering the questions, she was doodling _Ms. W. Lizzard, Esq_. in the margin of the paper, as well as a few ideas about setting up house. Which answered _that_ question, at any rate. "Career woman following her own path," his Great Aunt Mabel. She was still carrying a torch for her old flame, Little Bill. Fine. Hatter scowled ferociously at his paper. She was out of the question for cheating purposes, anyhow, unless he wanted to put down _confabulary china pattern?_ and _borogrove-leather drapes like Dinah's— how chic!_

Maus, to Hatter's left, wasn't getting along any better. He was planning on being a lawyer, and as such held to the protestation that he didn't _need_ to _know_ anything. He had written as much at the top of the paper, and was now sitting, paws folded, pointed nose lifted primly into the air, ignoring everything that went on around him. He was alright— he didn't need such bourgeois distraction as school. He had a guaranteed place in his father's law firm, anyway: Maus, Maus, and Fury. No problem.

No help there, either.

Hatter returned for a brief, sickening moment to his own blank paper. The question swam before his eyes: _The clock has slowed for exactly ten minutes, and proven to be two days, three hours, eight minutes, and fifty-one seconds wrong. Illustrate below the requisite ratio of crumbs to butter for this to be possible._

He never was much good at maths, especially this particular branch. Distraction he could get by with, but when it came to Ambition, Uglification, and Derision he was hopelessly lost. The first section of the quiz, on Reeling and Writhing, was bad enough, but when asked to add numbers to the mix, Hatter's head felt as though it were a giant door-hinge creaking in a slight wind. Loud, obvious, obnoxious, and desperately in need of oil.

_Twelve_, he scrawled beneath the question, fighting off blind panic, and in self defense flipped the paper over. It didn't help much, as there was another long column of questions on the other side. _Thirteen_, Hatter wrote, desperately, _twenty-two, forty-two, nine, eleven, eighty-six. Peanuts. Salt and pepper. Not enough._ Numbers were alright, he told himself (lying), at least he knew where he stood with them.

The last question on the quiz was an entirely different matter.

_Edwin and Morcar's seminal work on avian similarities to a variety of inanimate objects brought forth a number of different theories regarding cogent planes. In essay form, using the review of_ Avianus quod Stilus Superficies,_ explain how a raven is like a writing desk._

He needed help. There was nothing for it. He shot a look upwards at his scowling teacher, Ms. Mock. Her blunt nose twitched as she looked down in ineffable scorn on her struggling, sweating students. No. He'd sooner die than ask for help there.

Someone behind him poked him with a pencil, and Hatter whipped around to face him. Before his eyes appeared a most familiar face: narrow, nosy, mild shallow eyes, and extraordinarily protuberant buck teeth showing in a perpetual, unintended smile.

"What's the date, again?" whispered March.

Hatter experienced the kind of relief that comes from seeing a light at the end of a long dark tunnel; or, perhaps, of having fallen forever and finally being able to reach out and grasp something solid. Either way, this was good.

"I'll tell you, if you'll help me out with something."

March wrinkled his nose at his distraught friend. "Always the wheeler-dealer, Hatter. Don't you ever just give something away for free?"

"Not when I can give it away for payment. Are you going to help me or not?"

March tilted his head to one side, to look past Hatter and observe Ms. Mock. She was steadily staring down Dormy, in the front row, who looked absolutely terrified and as though he wanted nothing more than to go to sleep.

"Oh, _fine_," he whispered testily. "What's the problem?"

Hatter half turned in his seat and flipped March's paper over for him. "That one." The eraser end of his pencil stabbed emphatically at the last question. "When did we go over that? I don't even remember."

"You were suspended for singing— remember?" March suddenly got the giggles, and tried vainly to cover them up with one hand. His teeth, however, would not be denied and his mirth was plainly visible. "You were supposed to sing _Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Bat_, and instead you came up with that _obscene_—"

"_Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Duck_," supplied Hatter, a wide grin spreading over his face at the memory. "Mock nearly keeled over then and there. That was _great_."

There came a noise from the front of the room, as Ms. Mock got in a slight altercation with Griff, who prided himself on so wise that he never needed to do his homework. Hatter and March quieted down for a moment, till it blew over and it was safe to scheme together once more.

"But I still need to know," said Hatter. "Why _is_ a raven like a writing desk? That doesn't even make sense."

"Didn't you even do your make-up assignments?"

Hatter scoffed. "Are you kidding me? You're kidding me, right?"  
March sighed, and shook his head. "I don't know why I even bother. I really don't. One of these days, Hatter, you're going to get caught out. And I won't be here to help you. Nobody will be there to help you, you'll have to rely on yourself, and when that day comes—"

"Enough with the threats already," snapped Hatter. "What are you, my mother? Just—"

"Alright, alright!" March's voice was louder all of a sudden, his exasperation with his wayward friend showing clearly. From the front of the room, Ms. Mock's wizened face swung slowly towards them, eyes narrowing, nostrils flaring like a wolf seeking out its prey. _Students_. Scum of the earth. She _tried_ to whip them into shape before releasing them into the world, she _did_, but if they obstinately refused to listen to the discipline of their elders, then they would have to feel it instead.

March, who had painfully neat and tidy handwriting, had just set to slowly writing out the answer for Hatter on his friend's paper when a hand seized him by the ears. The other one, the second of a matching set, twisted into Hatter's collar. Both of the boys were hauled upwards as if by a crane; Ms. Mock, tiny and wizened as she might be, was possessed of a peculiarly burly strength, as though her body was on occasion taken over by a heavy-weight wrestler.

"_Boys!_" The word came like the shriek of a banshee, and she pulled them from their chairs and deposited them effortlessly at the front of the room. Every student in the room winced; with the notable exception, Hatter was displeased to find, being Mary Ann. Her head was still down, and she was hunkered protectively over her paper whilst she scribbled away. _Ms. W. Lizzard. Little Bill and Mary Ann Lizzard. The Lizzards and Co._ Heartburn, Hatter discovered, came from more than unwise eating habits; and regardless of the source, it was less than pleasant. See there, he even failed at schoolboy romances.

He had bigger things to worry about, however, at this point.

"What _were_ you doing?" keened Ms. Mock, in the sort of pointed rhetoric at which high school teachers excelled. She knew perfectly well what they were doing; they'd done so on a regular basis all through the nearly-twelve years she'd overseen their intellectual— and she used the word with stinging sarcasm— growth. Cheating was a way of life for the poorer students, the ones whose fathers could not afford to buy them a good grade; or, if not actual cheating, then allowing themselves to be creatively educated. Maths weren't much good in the real world, but if they could pick up a few pointers from word problems about the way money behaved, then there was at least some use to the years they put in at school.

Hatter was an unusual case, in a class all by himself. Or should be, in Ms. Lorry's opinion. His chicanery was incorrigible, unavoidable, frequently hilarious, and lethal to the continued peace in the classroom.

"What do you _think_ we were doing, Ms. Mock?" asked March, who was rather more hesitant about things than his smaller friend.

"I think you were cheating!" trumpeted their teacher, blinking rapidly behind her thick glasses. "At this late date, I should think I could recognize the signs! What _else_ would a pupil be doing with another pupil's test paper?"

"Blowing his nose," said Hatter, innocently. To illustrate his point, he sneezed. Now, maybe it was cruel of Hatter to do so when he knew that his aging instructor had a serious phobia of germs. At the very least, it would have taken very little effort to ensure that it wasn't quite so messy.

Hatter prided himself on living on the edge. The cheating, cake-eating, teacher-irritating, tea-stealing edge.

"To the head master's office!" proclaimed Ms. Mock, as though declaring the opening of hunting season. The prey was studentry at large, more specifically Hatter and March; the hunter was Mr. Duck, the school head master. An old military man, he prided himself on his dusty medals and his hard-won shrapnel wounds. He never had been inclined to look with leniency on students. Especially those who cheated.

Quiz papers in hand, Hatter and March found themselves in the waiting room adjacent to Mr. Duck's office, abject, desultory, depressed, and fearing for their continued health and happiness. Mr. Duck kept two pistols in his desk drawer, both loaded with duckshot. Duckshot, Hatter happened to know, had a way of rolling right off your skin, doing no permanent damage but leaving one heck of a bad bruise. It was favored by sportsmen and crowd-controllers alike, as well as by their illustrious principal.

Hatter lowered himself gingerly onto the dubiously-upholstered seats in the waiting room, which seemed to have been chosen especially for their ability to punish the recalcitrant bottoms of problem students. The grey-and-pink padding was hard as a rock and peculiarly ridged. Not to mention that the color scheme, especially when paired with the institutional green of the walls, was bound to inspire nausea in the onlooker. Hatter wasn't a particularly sensitive boy, but he did have a flair for the aesthetic. His clothes were a hallmark of this: not quite loud enough to be flamboyant, but certainly rather wordy all the same. Hatter was a young man with a statement to make; the specifics of the statement remained obscure, as yet, but it was definitely there.

"I blame the school system," he said.

"I blame Ms. Mock," said March, ignoring the seat and standing on one foot in the corner.

"I blame Mary Ann," offered Hatter.

"I blame society at large, which expects poor kids to fail."

"And rich kids to do well, even though they don't need the encouragement."

"Stupid rich kids."

"I blame the rich kids," said Hatter firmly. The duo lapsed into silence, and Hatter found himself wondering what his mother was up to now. She always seemed to get in trouble when he wasn't around, and from the most innocuous of sources. Baking a cake just last week, she had added too much soda to the mix. When he arrived home, it was to a kitchen with every surface covered by yellow cake, still growing, gradually encroaching on the living room. And his mother and grandfather, seated on folding chairs in the midst of the confection, calmly drinking tea and offering each other the occasional handful.

Sometimes it worried Hatter, that things like that might be hereditary. Plus, if he went crazy, he already knew what nickname _he'd_ get.

He wondered how long detention would last this time, and what phrase from the history books he would be forced to write five thousand times. The last time, it was the classic from Rabbit's _Laws and the Lawing Lawyers Who Law You_. "The Knave of Hearts, he stole some tarts, all on a summer's day." Great. What did that have to do with real life, Hatter wanted to know. How was that going to help him when it came time to leave school, run away from home, and become a knight?

He wanted to be a knight. He didn't share this ambition with anyone else, however. Everyone knew they were wiped out years ago.

School. Bah. What good did it do? Idly, he turned his paper right side up to look over his answers, such as they were. _Why is a raven like a writing desk?_ March hadn't gotten very far before he was interrupted by that foul jabberwock of an educator, Ms. Mock.

In fact, all he'd written was _Poe_.

Poe?

Hatter glanced up at his friend. "Poe?"

"Mmph?" said March, who had been engaged in his own deep concentration. "Yeah. Poe."

"That's it? _Poe_ is the answer?"

"Yeah. Well, no, that's not _all_ the answer. I didn't finish." He shrugged his narrow shoulders, the waistcoat slipping off to one side with the movement. "Doesn't matter anyway, does it? Not like we're going to pass the exams."

"Poe," muttered Hatter, turning the paper this way and that as though it would provide him with the explanation.

"Besides. The question was stupid. _Avianus quod Stilus Superficies_ wasn't about the _similarities_ between things, it was about the differences. Edwin and Morcar were making the point that A., not everything is connected, B., we shouldn't keep trying to find answers to things that don't need to be questioned anyhow, and C., teachers who use Edwin and Morcar for source material are stupid."  
"No arguments there," said Hatter, still staring at the paper.

"It's less about an answer, more about existentialism and the meaning of life. It's meant to be an enigma, you're not supposed to know the answer." March threw his hands in the air, obviously frustrated. "But because everyone in Wonderland thinks you're supposed to have an answer for everything, even questions that haven't been asked yet, they gave us one."

"And it involves Poe," said Hatter, in perfect seriousness, staring at his friend and hiding the telltale twitching of his smile. March was an intelligent boy, but his silly face didn't make it easy or natural for him to throw around terms like _existentialism_ and _enigma_. And not only because of the bucktooth-induced speech impediment.

"Read the book," sighed March, rolling his eyes. "The answer's in the book."

Hatter gazed at the paper a moment longer, then tossed it. It wafted down to the floor, meandering and slow, much like a piece of paper that knows its point in life has been done away with. There would be no quizzes, no exams, no proper graduation for this lot.

"Ah, who cares," said Hatter.

The door to the inner sanctum opened, and March was summoned. Hatter watched him go. For a moment the boy was framed in the doorway, light around him, his back straight, his shoulders hunched, his ears sticking out. March was a good boy, Hatter thought, if a little on the weird side. He tended to think too much about things. He would get on a subject and follow it to its logical conclusion, or to its death, or to the death of those around him. Just a little bit obsessive. Hatter didn't expect to ever really understand his friend.

The paper had skittered under a chair. Hatter retrieved it and resumed staring at the scrawled word under the question. The wrong question, the half-answer. Pointless, all of it. _Poe_— Still, there was the niggling feeling of curiosity deep within, and he was glad he wasn't a cat.

He'd have to make a stop by the Great Library on the way home. Check it out. Find the book. He'd have to hurry, though— he promised his mother he'd be home in time for tea.

Hatter settled into his chair, waiting his turn in the head master's office. Life wasn't about quizzes and exams, schools and maths, getting a giant red A scrawled on your paper. Life was out there, waiting for him to live it. Questions without answers. Answers without questions. Rain without umbrellas.

Good thing he had his hat.

He folded his arms, crossed his legs, and settled down; content, for now, to wait.


End file.
